TWENTY-FOUR

The summer died in indecision; autumn’s splendid rot set in. The world was streaked rust-red and gold, fruits and berries tumbling onto the long trestle tables. The harvest was brought in, the blindness of the king leaked out. Stubbled fields bled into browning forests. The nights drew cold. Folkmar’s waddle was becoming a swagger; Leif practised speeches for a flyting; no birds sang. Men walked in fear of what was to come, and what might not, and it was rumoured Gorm the Old would not last another winter.

Thyre’s face was a storm cloud in these days, as more and more of the Thor’s hammers vanished from around necks, melted into coinage or even recast into true crosses. Haralt sent for engineers from Hamburg, to chart the marshes where the trolls still mourned and to see about building a bridge there.

Astrid was not sleeping well, out in the stables. Both her parents falling apart; her favourite brother risking his life across the ocean; the terror of Hellir, the gorge, and Folkmar’s wandering fingers – it was no surprise, she told herself, that she could imagine the sound of the angel, landing on the stable roof.

Soft wing beats. A creak of timbers. Slow pacing.

She turned over, trying to ignore the sounds her over-wrought mind must be imagining.

Another creak; a scatter of fallen dust and splinters across her upturned cheek.

After all, it made no sense for the angel to be here: it was on a mission to kill pagan creatures, things of magic. And there was nothing of that sort here.

A jolt. A thud. Except for …

A sudden flurry of sounds, a high skittering above; three jarring strides and a crash of rent wood. Above it all, the thinnest, smallest squeal and then a deafening shriek of triumph.

Except for …

‘Nisse!’ she screamed. In a blur of terror Astrid leapt from the bed, groped for flint and tinder, struck a light. The din of the departing angel as it rose up from the roof was all around her. And at the foot of the bed lay a tiny, childlike figure, crumpled from its fall. It was the first time she’d actually seen him.

There was so little blood.

Astrid buried Nisse in the stable, the packed, hard earth moistened by her tears. If the tipping point is coming, she thought, and all this will be ended, then let it come soon. Though, had she drunk from Mimir’s well of wisdom and seen what was to come, she would have wished those words unsaid.

One morning, Gorm stirred from his bed, and set the whole of Jelling scurrying.

‘What are the men about?’ Astrid asked her mother, relieved that something was happening.

‘They are set to start reshaping the mound,’ said Thyre, and her words were as rocks on a stormy headland.

‘What, the old burial mound beside the Yelling Stones? But why?’

And then Astrid bit her lip, afraid of the answer.

‘Your father … Your father’s thoughts have turned to the hereafter,’ said Thyre. She hid her face for a moment. ‘At least we need not fear his following Christ! Gorm the Old will go to his grave Odin’s man.’ And then she stalked off, overcome.

Outside, a gale whipped men’s cloaks and hair about their faces, and made it hard to see. Shielding her eyes, Astrid bent into the winter wind and ran out to the stones. Beyond them she saw her father, wrapped in wolf skins, supported on either side, and gesturing here and there to warriors-turned-workmen. They brought shovel and adze, and felled trees in the forest, and all the time King Gorm stood erect in the wind, grey and grim as a standing stone himself, and, blind though he was, directed the digging of his own grave.

All the villages for days’ travel around sent men to help with the mound’s enlargement – it was not as if they had a choice. Jarl Tofi, the man Knut had called a sissy, came in person with a score of workers from Baekke. He sat stone-faced at Thyre’s side, watching the digging and laying and turfing. Gorm was set on its being finished before the first snows fell.

And finished it was. As the first flurries came in from the west, wet and driving and sludgy white, they fell upon an immense and green-turfed mound, dwarfing the hall. Tools were packed and labourers ran home, to reach their firesides and families before the worst of the snow hit.

‘Perhaps now we can all forget this folly and start thinking about our family’s actual future?’ said Haralt, at dinner. ‘There is the question of Astrid’s marriage, for instance.’

Outside, a blizzard was growing. Haralt raised his voice above it. ‘I have been having thoughts on that matter. It is in our best interests to strengthen Danish ties to the Saxon court. At this very table, we have a representative –’

Astrid and Thyre both opened their mouths to shout Haralt down. Then they closed them again. Haralt too tailed off. Everyone was suddenly silent.

Someone was hammering on the doors of the hall.

‘Who comes calling at such a time, and in this weather?’ Haralt cried.

‘Oh for Thor’s sake, someone open the accursed door,’ snapped Thyre.

Two men leapt to the task. As soon as the massive oak bar was raised, the gale flung the doors apart, knocking the men to the ground.

All eyes peered against the swirling white. All faces felt the chill. The hall fires guttered and dwindled with the blast. And in came a man.

He was broken, and bent, and swaddled up against the snow with moulting piles of bloodied bearskin. His face was a web of scars. His eyes were sunken pits, and his hands … his hands …

‘Weland!’ cried Thyre. Everyone rose to get a better look at the one-time warrior.

‘What? Our smith returned?!’

‘Come in, Weland, come and get warm!’

‘What brings you back alone, man?’

‘How fares Knut?’

But Thyre stood in silence, both hands before her mouth. She eyed Weland as if he were a ghost.

Slowly, everyone in the hall realised that something was very, very wrong. The cries of greeting ebbed away into awful silence. No one could move; no one save that shambling figure, edging up towards the stricken queen.

And in that silence, another door banged behind her, and Gorm the Old fumbled his way from his bed to stand before his throne. He raised two trembling, skeleton’s hands above his head. And he stared, unseeing, straight at Weland, and he cried out, in a voice like coffins toppling open, ‘My son Knut is dead!’